Teun Dekker

About

Contact: Inst. för växtskyddsbiologi
Box 102
230 53 Alnarp

Email

Teun.Dekker@slu.se

Time

08:00 To 15:00

Presentation

Agricultural production and food security are increasingly under pressure due to a sharply rising human population. Increased production is however constrained by several, in part human-caused, factors such as climate change, erosion and degradation, and pests. To secure a healthy globe with food for all, we urgently need to innovate agrifood and find knowledge-intensive techniques that support the sustainable use and restoration of natural resources, and embrace and foster the complexity of agro-ecosystems instead of molding it to only fit our short-term needs only. I have a keen interest in contributing to this by delivering knowledge and techniques that can selectively remove pest insects from production systems, without affecting beneficial organisms or the environment.

As a chemical ecologist, much of my research aims to find signaling molecules which are selectively attractive or repellent for pest insects, and harness these in novel control techniques with minimal to no negative impact to the surrounding. Pests include flies, mosquitoes and moths. My research includes fundamental studies to understand the inner workings of sensory systems of pests, and a keen interest to accelerate this knowledge into the application, with a particular interest in invasive species biology. To facilitate finding innovations against pest insects, we work on an olfactomics platform (www.tephri.org). This platform aims to create an open-access database of sensory responses of insects to volatiles from where researchers can extract potential attractants and repellents that are selective for defined taxa.

My research on the invasive fruit fly D. suzukii entails both fundamental and applied (formulation, field) studies and is financed through SLF, Sparbanken Stiftlsen, Ekhaga Stiftelsen, FORMAS, and SLU.